At Trane Technologies, finding skilled HVAC and refrigeration technicians is an ongoing challenge. Instead of waiting for talent to appear, the company decided to create it.
In this episode, Courtney Abramo, Director of Talent Acquisition for the Americas at Trane Technologies, explains how her team built a four-year technician apprenticeship program with the Department of Labor, opened a state-of-the-art training center, and applied AI and automation to elevate the recruiting process, all while keeping empathy and transparency at the heart of their work.
Courtney shares:
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[00:00:00] Courtney Abramo: The candidate is the number one customer, whether we are hiring that talent and making them an offer, or maybe not for this role, they are the most important part of this process.
[00:00:10] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent today? I'm Dave Travers, President of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Today's Talent All Star is Courtney Abramo, Director of Talent Acquisition for the Americas at Trane Technologies, which designs and builds HVAC and refrigeration systems that keep homes comfortable, transport food safely, and help businesses reduce their environmental footprint.
In this episode, you'll learn the exact moment Courtney knew talent acquisition was a perfect fit for her and how her team at Trane Technologies built a four-year apprenticeship to attract new technicians and a new training center to upskill their current workforce, plus why she sees candidate experience as her team's North Star.
So let's bring Courtney in. Courtney Abramo, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:03] Courtney Abramo: Thanks, Dave. I'm excited to be here today.
[00:01:05] Dave Travers: Delighted to have you here. So much interesting stuff to touch on here. But first, I want to get to before you became a talent acquisition leader, when you were first getting started in talent acquisition or wherever it was.
When you thought recruiting could be, and connecting people to their next great opportunity could be something that's not just your current nine to five, but is something that could really be a signature part of your career. When, when did that happen for you? Do you remember a moment? Was there a time when it really connected for you? How did that happen?
[00:01:38] Courtney Abramo: So. I think, like most talent acquisition leaders or partners or recruiters, you kind of fall into TA. It's not something that I went to school for or focused on, but my moment was actually in college when I was, um, volunteering. For our athletic group, and I was there and they said, Hey, do you want a job staffing these events?
I didn't know what staffing was. All I knew was I have got great organization skills. I love to talk to people and this was fun, and I could make money. So I started there. But when it really clicked, though, was that. We're changing people's lives. We're giving people jobs. These are moments that matter in people's careers, and I remind my team now to stop and pause and remember that if you've got an offer or actually you know somebody not getting an offer on a Friday afternoon, make the call.
Don't make them go through the weekend. These are people's lives. Yes, we do this every day, but it's not a transaction. It truly does matter. So. That's really when it clicked in, and I think you have to have that passion. And as soon as you don't have that passion, you shouldn't be NTA.
[00:02:56] Dave Travers: I love that passion that you talk about, and I think that's so true.
If you're in the business of doing this, you know, talking to the next candidate or giving the next offer something is like your 9:15 to 9:30 time slot. To them, it's like this moment they will never forget. So positive and negative, and helping 'em through both is awesome. So I couldn't agree more.
Okay. So then you have had a super interesting journey along the way, and you didn't just end up being a recruiter, you have now ended up being a leader of a recruiting team and teams. So how did that happen? When did the idea that I don't wanna just be the person doing the next interview or making the next offer, but I could see myself architecting this whole system and leading people.
[00:03:40] Courtney Abramo: It happened at my role previous to Trane. At Chiquita, when I was helping them to relocate, and we were growing a team. So I started off with contract recruiters. I fell in love with the coaching aspects of it, when then I transitioned over to Train Technologies was Ingersoll Rand. I started off as an individual contributor though, 'cause it's a beast of an organization.
You have to gain the credibility. But I had such a great leadership team that were continually helping me to open doors and investing in my development, and I was also taking control of my career as well, that it just continued, and I absolutely love leading a large team now and being able to see them continue to grow and develop.
And maybe it's within TA, and maybe it's into a different function and either way, that's wonderful.
[00:04:38] Dave Travers: So, talk about what's different about leading than being the individual contributor. What are the challenges and what's the part that's so fun that you love?
[00:04:45] Courtney Abramo: So some of the challenges are is that you can't do it.
So when you're an individual contributor, you can just get on the phone and do it yourself and close that deal, lock that candidate down and you can't do that when you're leading a team, but the exciting part is being able to coach people through role, play with them, and then see their eyes light up when they're able to find that candidate connect with the business, are invited into rooms where they haven't been before.
[00:05:16] Dave Travers: Yeah. I think that taking the satisfaction in other people's accomplishments that you're enabling on your team and realizing the multiplier effect of how much impact you can have in doing that is critical, 'cause there are a lot of hard parts about leading too. So you better, you better enjoy the good parts like that.
[00:05:31] Courtney Abramo: And anytime anybody that knows me knows that I will like shout my team's successes from the rooftops.
[00:05:37] Dave Travers: Yeah. No, no better way to win over your own team or anybody in life. You know, flattery will get you everywhere. Okay. So when you move from Chiquita to Trane, you went from a consumer brand that people know to an industrial brand that, within the world of, you know, things like HVAC systems and how you heat and cool big building, huge brand, but not necessarily something that the average consumer knows what that is.
How did that affect, like how your strategy has to differ when you're talking to somebody about a brand that everybody's seen in the supermarket versus a brand that maybe some people who haven't been in the industry or something before.
[00:06:15] Courtney Abramo: The main thing that changed is that they were sold on the brand prior, before you got 'em on the phone.
So when we get our candidates on the phone now, as soon as they hear about all the amazing things that we're doing to transform client control and our company's goal to continue to combat climate change. They're sold. They're done. I mean, yes, Trane Technologies, but some of our strategic brands are very well known in the market, with Thermo King and Trane.
And so once you mention that as well, and then you start going into the amazing things that we're doing as far as our life sciences. All you have to do is get somebody on the phone, and once they're there, you've got 'em.
[00:06:55] Dave Travers: Yeah, no, I think that's so powerful. Like the, you know, you think about something like impacting climate, where the built environment is something like 40% of carbon emissions is responsible for 40%.
When you think about all that goes into buildings, and the things that Trane does. So, giving people a sense of like, let's zoom out to what our broader impact is, is such a powerful way to draw people into an organization and into a role. Okay, so now, as you're a leader of this team. You're not just managing down and training new recruiters, et cetera.
You've gotta be a leader across. You've got all these peers running different parts of the organizations who are like managing hiring managers who need to get things done? How did that transition goes? Now you're not just the recruiter, you're a business executive at a big company where you've gotta interact with finance and HR and legal and, and the business units and all those things.
How did you get comfortable and get the confidence to be that leader that extends outside of the TA function?
[00:07:56] Courtney Abramo: So it's really going in and asking a lot of questions. Making sure that you're listening and that you're embedding yourself into the business. That I think is the most important thing. And then this is gonna sound super simple, but say what you're gonna do and actually do it.
I mean, it sounds simple, but unfortunately, you know that doesn't always happen. So when you're sitting aside alongside these leaders, you're helping to brainstorm, you're being transparent. You're saying when maybe you don't necessarily have an answer to a challenge that bring to you. You're a real person. That's how I believe you get a lot of credibility.
[00:08:37] Dave Travers: Yes, uh, that's so true. And that managing expectations that way. And when you're in a meeting with a bunch of other people and you're talking about some recruiting problem, when you can set the expectations yourself to exceed. So if you know something's gonna take an hour for you to follow up, say, you know, okay, by.
This time next week, I'm gonna circulate a new document with our new strategy that we've discussed today. And then when you send it around to people two hours after the meeting, they're like, Oh, this is incredible. Meanwhile, you always knew it was just gonna take you an hour to do it. You had time to go get a cup of coffee before you sat down and did it right away.
But there's no better way to establish yourself exactly, to your point, than to be one of those people who's like, if I say I'm gonna do it, mark it down is already done.
[00:09:17] Courtney Abramo: Yeah. And it's not always peaches and cream. There are some times where, you know what? There are barriers that arise, that arose. So just make sure that when you're communicating with folks and those come up, be transparent, tell them, Hey, this is what we're coming across.
I need more information, more resources, or we need to get back together to reestablish next steps.
[00:09:42] Dave Travers: Yeah, so, I couldn't agree with that more so, Courtney, now, what are the challenges that Trane has in recruiting today? We're in a unique post-COVID environment. The technology's changing everything. What is it that Trane is up against to find your next great candidate?
[00:09:57] Courtney Abramo: Yeah, so everyone has challenges. They're all different. But if I think about some of our greatest hiring challenges. They have been and will continue to be around, finding that experienced commercial HVAC technician. So we've partnered our workforce innovation team with the Department of Labor, and we actually created a technician apprenticeship program.
It's a four-year program. And we have our first 33 apprentices that are graduating this winter. The program has gotten a very high volume of applicants too. So on average, if we've got an experienced service technician role, we'll get about 10 applicants per this one; we are seeing hundreds, if not thousands.
We had over 8,000 applicants for the two cohorts in 2025. So that's one thing that we did. In addition, now we've got regional technician sourcing plans. So it's not a peanut butter spread. It's not the same if I'm recruiting in California versus somewhere on the East Coast. So our technician recruiters are really focusing on understanding the mix of talent that we're looking for.
For a technician, is it an install? For example, or is it maintenance work? Is it data center work? Because that's very much up and coming as well, and they're building out those sourcing strategies in partnership with the business. So, making sure that it's not just this is what the TA says to do, but what does the business need?
Where should we work together to find this talent? And these technician recruiters, they're just really hitting their stride, and I'm proud of them.
[00:11:36] Dave Travers: That's awesome. So this is an amazing insight is when you have a structural shortage of a really impactful role. And so people viscerally from life experience, know how a nurse powers a hospital or a clinic, uh, but they may not understand that an HVAC technician powers your ability to be comfortable inside of a building.
And they're very hard to find structurally, there aren't enough of them to go around. So, rather than wait to steal one from some other location or some other company when there's a structural shortage, let's make more of them, is an amazing way to do it, and let's lower the barriers for people to get started through an apprenticeship program.
[00:12:12] Dave Travers: I think that's super creative and a super powerful way of addressing a critical labor shortage.
[00:12:17] Courtney Abramo: In addition, we also opened up a few weeks ago our advanced technician training center. And so what that is is it's out of Davidson, North Carolina, and our technicians have the ability to get retrained upskilled on a very frequent process.
So between Lacrosse, Wisconsin, and Davidson, North Carolina, it's a state-of-the-art facility that our technicians, whether you're an apprentice like we just talked about, or a seasoned technician, a controls technician, you're going through and you're working on the products in a very safe environment.
[00:12:51] Dave Travers: In addition to finding and creating new talent, it's because the technology that we're all of us are using is changing all the time.
You have to have a strategy to upskill, to keep your current people up to date on all the new and greatest things. Super smart.
[00:13:04] Courtney Abramo: And it's important to technicians. Very important.
[00:13:07] Dave Travers: Yes. Uh, as a career growth and career stability thing for them. Hugely important. That's exactly right. So one of the other interesting things you have experience with is acquisitions, and mergers, and acquisitions.
So Trane was spun out of a larger company, I believe, and you guys made an acquisition not too long ago. Talk a little bit about when the corporate structure is moving around. How do you, as the, the, you know, talent needs change as the corporation structure changes, how do you adapt to that? Give us some tips and tricks for the framework you use for that.
[00:13:41] Courtney Abramo: Well, m and a is cool. It's fun work. Like, so first of all, like that's exciting. I want us to continue to grow and to acquire new organizations. We take a really strategic approach to each acquisition. So making sure that as part of that process, we have a dedicated team with standard operating procedures, with intakes.
One group we could integrate talent acquisition into right from the beginning. At other times, it might be a longer approach that we do that we also need to always remember, and I somebody that is in this situation that, again, like we talked about in the beginning, these are people's lives. So anytime that there is an acquisition, people are stressed.
It's exciting times for the employees, but at the same time too, it's a time of uncertainty to just step back and meet people where they're at, I think it's really important and just keep that top of mind that it might not be cookie-cutter from one acquisition to the next.
[00:14:43] Dave Travers: I think that is so smart because the temptation when you acquire a company is to say, we've got our process.
We've got it figured out. We'll just get them to change their process to our process, and there's absolutely a place for that because a lot of times you've thought about it more than you have, but at the same time, these people coming in are feeling really good about themselves. You just paid a lot of money probably to acquire them.
They think they're really smart, and they probably are. And so just telling them, forget everything the way you've ever done it, you're now gonna do it our way. That wasn't the point of the acquisition, and that's not the way to bring people on and make them feel like I am part of the team.
[00:15:19] Courtney Abramo: Exactly, Dave.
[00:15:19] Dave Travers: Okay. So one of the interesting things that you guys have done is one of your recent acquisitions, I believe, was an AI-related acquisition of Brainbox to make HVAC systems work even smarter. We're living in a world where AI is the word of the day, the watchword of the day. As you think about AI in the recruiting function within talent acquisition, how do you think about where you want to start to insert technology into the process, and where the human part of what we talked about, about the joy of telling somebody that they've got the job or they've got the offer.
Um, where do you want to keep the humans involved? How do you think about that?
[00:15:57] Courtney Abramo: So overall, very excited about the efficiency that AI can bring when it comes to talent acquisition work. There should always be a human aspect to it, but there's things like anticipating internal moves before they could possibly happen with utilizing AI or exits from the organization and using it as a retention play.
There scanning markets where maybe some other companies had to do some downsizing, but how are the people that are downsized match up to the opportunities that we have so that we can serve them with opportunities? Versus our sourcing team that would manually have to do that work. Those are some of the areas that we're exploring.
And then obviously there's AI, there's automation, so we are automating some of our very manual, tedious processes so that our talent acquisition partners can focus on those moments that matter that we talked about extending that verbal offer. Getting that candidate to understand how excited we are for them to join the organization and making sure that we are answering any questions that they may have around there.
We're really coaching our teams to embrace it. It's coming fast, so let's make sure that we're at the forefront of it. And it doesn't mean that we are taking out the human touch in all aspects. We're just making it so that you can do your job easier.
[00:17:19] Dave Travers: I think that's so smart because you know, if you think about a scenario where you're behind on your scheduling tasks, if you're doing that manually and so you're rushing off of a call where you're making an offer, 'cause you gotta get back to scheduling.
That's no good. We can use technology to take care of the scheduling for you, and you can take the time to really make that candidate feel great and make saying yes, super easy to that exciting offer. I think that's really smart. Okay. We always end these episodes with the lightning round. So I want you to assume that you're in a situation where the CEO of Trane is getting into the elevator with you and you've got 30 or 60 seconds to chat and answer a question, and the CEO says, Hey Courtney, you're the recruiting expert.
I spent a bunch of my time interviewing people formally and informally, external roles, internal roles, internal candidates, all sorts of stuff like, gimme your one best tip. How do I become a better interviewer?
[00:18:14] Courtney Abramo: What I would say is just listen more than you talk and make sure that you're asking the right probing questions.
[00:18:20] Dave Travers: I love that. Give me one good probing question or a technique to come up with a good probing question for an interview.
[00:18:27] Courtney Abramo: It could really just be so, so tell me more about X, Y, Z, and just pulling more out of them and making them feel comfortable.
[00:18:34] Dave Travers: I love that. The thing that senior leaders often feel like is they feel like they're on stage and they have to perform.
And often the setting, the example that you actually wanna know more makes it clear that you're actually there to listen and take them in, which is the most powerful way to sell someone, and hear what they're all about. I love that. Okay, one more, uh, lightning round scenario. Same scenario. The CEO gets in the elevator.
Hey, Courtney, like I was thinking about how our most valuable asset is our people, and you're leading up our talent acquisition strategy, which is critical to that. How should we measure the talent acquisition team and its performance over the next couple of years? How do I even think about that?
[00:19:15] Courtney Abramo: The candidate is the number one customer, so I would say candidate experience, whether we are hiring that talent and making them an offer or maybe not for this role, they are the most important.
As part of this process. So I would say that we should measure our candidate experience.
[00:19:31] Dave Travers: I love that. I love the candidate experience that works in so many ways. One, obviously, a lot of those people are gonna end up being employees, so you're setting the first impression of the company. Second of all, you're in an industry where a lot of your most important roles, even if the fit isn't right at that moment or something, you are in an industry where there's a very good chance they're gonna end up working at a partner or an upstream or downstream, uh, you know, supply chain or you know, somewhere else that where their impression of Trane is really important. And so this is a moment to brand yourself, even if the role doesn't work out for that candidate right away. That is such a smart way of thinking about it.
[00:20:10] Courtney Abramo: We need to create brand ambassadors either way, because it could be their neighbor that maybe is looking for a job too, that they could say, you know what?
I didn't end up working there, but I had such a great experience with Trane Technologies. Maybe you should look.
[00:20:23] Dave Travers: Yes, creating a viral loop out of candidates who don't even get a job is an amazing, amazing recruiting strategy. Courtney Abramo, it is so clear why you're a Talent AllStar. Thanks so much for taking the time with us today.
[00:20:35] Courtney Abramo: Thank you so much, Dave. I enjoyed it.
[00:20:41] Dave Travers: That's Courtney Abramo, director of Talent Acquisition for the Americas at Trane Technologies. We'll put her LinkedIn profile in the episode description, and as a reminder, we post the video versions of these conversations on YouTube on the official ZipRecruiter channel. If you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email to talentall stars@ziprecruiter.com.
I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All Stars, and we'll see you right back here next time.